


you wake up with a hatchet over your head

by proximally



Series: cognitive dissonance [1]
Category: Prey (Video Game 2017)
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary Morgan Yu, POV Second Person, minor dehumanisation, pov typhon!morgan, vague typhon worldbuilding or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:38:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proximally/pseuds/proximally
Summary: You're learning. You wish they'd cut you a little slack.





	you wake up with a hatchet over your head

**Author's Note:**

> Written mostly in June 2017, a few parts just now; title from the lyrics of Exxus by Glass Animals.

i.

It’s funny, how fast things can change. Years could pass, each one indistinguishable from the last, just to be overturned in moments. How long does a car crash take? How much time for a bomb to hit? How many milliseconds to process that everything you thought you knew was a carefully constructed lie?

It’s not even been a full day since you were fighting for your life, fighting for the lives of those around you, trapped in a dying space station with the sword of Damocles hanging invisibly over your head and the weight of your decisions on your shoulders, stuck between a shady brother and a suspicious robot, with no way of knowing what was right or wrong or if you’d even live to see the consequences of your actions...

And now, you sit quietly in a little white room with sterile bedsheets and a plastic floor, one wall taken up by a one-way mirror you pretend not to notice, the other by a glass screen that separates you from the door. None of that really happened; at least, not the way you remember it, and not to you. You’re not Morgan. You’re not human. Honestly, you’re barely even a person. But… you have their memories - what’s left of them, anyway. You recall time spent in the kitchen, experimenting with your favourite dishes and trying to improve them. Your ninth birthday party, when you lost so badly at Mariokart that you refused to leave your room for a week. Age fifteen, sneaking out to an acquaintance’s house party on a promise of alcohol, and leaving after five minutes when you discovered the lie. You remember all these things, but you don’t remember being eleven, or your cat’s name, or the sound of your mother’s voice. _Your memory’s shot full of holes, I know,_ the Morgan in the Looking Glass had said, _I’m sorry, but it’s permanent._

You think that, maybe, you’re as much Morgan now as Morgan ever was then.

At the same time, you think that’s a dangerous thing to believe in. You don’t know who’s watching you through the mirror, but you feel their attention; you wouldn’t leave you unsupervised, either, even in this masterpiece of a cell. It was designed just for you, you can tell; its sleek and seamless walls offer no outs, and no item smaller than a beach ball rests on any surface. There are subtle indents in the walls and ceiling, and you suspect something nasty behind them - though whether it’s bullets or gas or GLOO is anyone’s guess. The point, though, is that your life is in their hands. These people are scientists, and now they know what variables to tweak to produce something like you; they can always just try again. You know you’re not the first. Probably not even the tenth, or twentieth.

So, you sit patiently. You’ve tried hard to be Morgan-shaped, but in the mirror you look wrong, and you can’t quite figure out why. You sit hands in lap, gaze fixed unblinking on the far wall, and you wait for the other shoe to drop.

 

 

ii.

Igwe enters, hours later, accompanied by Elazar, and you think the others are watching through the mirror; you’d swear you heard Alex’s voice. You suppose it’s something you’re primed to notice.

They administer some basic tests. Looking at your comprehension, knowledge, numerical and language skills.

_ >> Do you understand what we’re saying? _

Naturally.

_ >> Hold up two fingers. _

Right hand out, two digits outstretched. You put extra effort into making them look more solid and fleshy; they don’t seem to notice.

_ >> What number am I showing you? _

Six. Adding a sixth finger to your hand would be child’s play, but you do it the normal, human way. You won’t push your luck.

_ >> What year did Morgan graduate from university? _

  1. Two years early, because they could, and for literally no other reason.



_ >> Can you read this sentence? _

Two plus six is eight. You flash them the numbers in rapid succession, then again but slower - just in case, y’know? To show willing.

_ >> Type the following phrase. _

A holographic keyboard materialises before you on the desk, and now there’s a blinking cursor projected onto the glass that separates you from the operators.

_ >> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. _

Gently, you touch the letters in order. Maybe a little slower than you might’ve liked. Spelling had never been Morgan’s forte, either.

_ >> What was the name of Morgan’s primary school? _

Pinewood Preparatory School. Private, of course, and four hundred miles from home. The Yus wouldn’t _dream_ of saddling their children with anything less than the best education money could buy; Morgan had hated every minute of it. Your typed answer is underlined in red zig-zag, but you can’t pinpoint the error. The operators are silent.

_ >> Write the following phrase. _

There’s a whiteboard affixed to the wall, which Igwe gestures to with one mechanical arm. A black marker dangles from a slim chain by its side. You pick it up and uncap it.

_ >> Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. _

Picturing the shapes of the letters in your mind, you slowly drag the pen over the surface of the board. Your hand trembles, and your careful line goes sideways, piercing the previous letters. Frustration washes through you in a wave and you feel your shape falter, exposing the ink-black tendrils writhing beneath your fake skin. Just for a moment, though. Just a moment, and no longer. You simulate what you think a deep breath looks like, unclench your fists, and start again.

 

 

iii.

“It’s not going to work, you know.”

Mikhaila. Or what remains of her. They’ve yet to tell you anything about… well, anything. They don’t tend to address you at all outside of the tests they run. Mikhaila might be hale and healthy and this just a mechanical drone, for all you know. It’s still nice to hear her voice, when she drops by. You’re not sure why she does; she’s not part of the tests, and she’s not on guard detail either.

“Keep their face as long as you want, no one’s going to fall for it.”

Your brows furrow. You understand that this is what a human’s face does when it disapproves of something. This isn’t a personal choice, as such. It’s just… Morgan’s shape is familiar to you, like muscle memory; you don’t have to concentrate so hard for it to be accurate.

You can’t communicate this, of course. You don’t have any typing equipment to hand, and you haven’t figured out how to replicate speech yet - you understand it’s something to do with lungs and tubes, but Morgan was always more interested in the smaller scale. The lady gets what the lady wants, though, so you make what you think is a sort of acquiescing gesture (a gentle head bob, the frown from earlier alleviated) and drop the image entirely.

It’s a little odd, retaking your native form. Yes, you default to it when your concentration falters and when you slip into your low-energy state, but you’ve been trying so hard to look human that your true self has become unfamiliar territory. You stretch out a little, fibrous limbs brushing the floor, remembering how you work.

Mikhaila, on her part, recoils sharply from the glass. You think this is what’s called ‘surprise’; you’ve done something unexpected. But… this is what she wanted, right? You’re pretty sure you parsed it correctly; Morgan was always very good at reading between the lines.

She floats there for a moment, camera directed at you, and you hear her say, quietly, “I knew it.”

She leaves, after that, and you don’t see her again except in company of another operator. You spend a week wondering what you did wrong.

 

 

iv.

The problem, now, is that you find that people do not like to address you if you look like yourself, and have difficulty when you imitate something else - and if they’re uncomfortable when you wear Morgan’s face, you’d struggle to find a word strong enough to describe how they felt the few moments you wore Emma Beatty. You added _desecration_ to your vocabulary that day, and Danielle has not directly spoken to you since.

(How were you to know she’d died? You’d saved her, in the simulation. How could you know that the real Morgan hadn’t done the same?)

So, if you must look human, but not a human you have known… you need to get creative.

You start with the nose, softening its angles and erasing the crookedness you remember from a surprise fall off a balcony that the medkit couldn’t quite fix. You lower the cheekbones, round the face, thin the lips and sharpen the brows. The eyes you lighten and the hair you darken, and it’s at this point that Alex Yu pulls you aside and asks you what the hell you think you’re playing at.

“I am not Morgan,” you tell him, firmly, and for once you don’t even try to hide your staticky typhon accent. You’re trying to make a point here, after all.

“Evidently,” he replies, and though it’s a confirmation of your statement, even a tacit approval perhaps, there’s something in his voice that makes you cringe.

“You seem uncomfortable?” you ask, hoping for an explanation - more often than anyone else is Alex willing to humour you, and you think this situation might require some open communication.

His face changes. Just for a split second, for a brief, unguarded moment. Brows rise up, knitting together, wrinkling his forehead. Eyes squint, one corner of the mouth twitches skywards, a slight scrunching of the nose-- and then it’s gone, like it never was.

A shudder rolls through you, rippling across your physical form like it does your emotional state. You don’t really want that explanation anymore. You’d known they hated you, on some level, but… well.

What _else_ have you messed up, under the assumption you were doing well?

**Author's Note:**

> sorry the ending's kinda abrupt - i think the intention was for this to be much longer, but of _course_ i wrote nothing down, and i have not a clue what it would've been. rip.
> 
> also, here's a fun fact that apparently had me reeling enough to write it down when i made note of nothing else: mariokart 7, the first one with the hang-gliders, was released in 2011, nearly 8 years ago. what the hell.


End file.
